A motor vehicle steering wheel is frequently provided with a signaling arrangement, e.g. for operating a horn of the vehicle, which can comprise a pair of spaced apart contacts, one of which is spring biased away from the other and is movable upwardly and downwardly during the making and breaking of the contact to operate a load such as the vehicle horn. To connect this movable contact or even the known movable contact in cases in which the steering wheel itself may be capable of upward and downward movement, e.g. in the case of an adjustable steering wheel, it is a practice to provide a slip ring which is engaged by a contact finger guided in an insulating sleeve mounted in the steering wheel hub. The contact finger is connected by a cable to one of the contacts of the signaling arrangement. The slip ring is connected to a source of electric current.
In such signaling devices it is known to provide the insulating sleeve with a rectangular cross section passage in which the contact finger is axially guided but prevented from twisting, the contact finger heretofore being constituted as a U-section sheet metal body within this rectangular cross section passage of the sleeve and having a tubular configuration at its head engageable with the slip ring. At the cable end of the contact finger, two tongues are bent from the sheet metal contact finger to form stops limiting the displacement of the finger toward the slip ring.
In this arrangement, the connection between the contact finger and the cable lies outside the insulating sleeve to permit the necessary degree of free movement for the stroke of the contact of the signaling arrangement. The connection between the contact finger and the cable is thus not fully reliable and, since the sheet metal contact finger cannot always be made to the desired tolerances and may be deformed by the upward and downward movement, even the operation of the contact finger is frequently unreliable.